Waiting for a book to fall

At first, no one was selling Fforde in this country. The copy I found was sulking about in the children's section of the British Council library. Then, when I went to my favourite bookshop recently, I found they had five titles written by him. What a letdown!

The joy of waiting was lost in one clean sweep. Of course I bought all the books but I don't half feel like reading them anymore.

Can you a Fforde not to read this?

Just stumbled upon a gem of a book. The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde is the story of a woman who goes to live inside an unpublishable novel on a character exchange programme. She goes there for a year to get away from the real world. And one of the reasons she chooses a book too bad to be published is that she won't have to stick to the exact dialogue in the book. In this world, shops specialise in sad childhood backgrounds for characters and other fictional paraphernelia.

It's a delightful book, the second truly imaginative thing I've read since J K Rowling. I mean after Rowling, there was a rash of writing in that genre but everyone used the same ideas as Rowling -- witches and wizards and dragons and magic lands. But very few, and I have read only one other, came up with a truly original idea. That is the mark of genius, after all. The other person is Walter Moer. The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear was such a find. And now Fforde.

According to his website, his next book, The Big Over Easy is about Humpty Dumpty's celebrated plunge from the wall. Waiting for that to get here.

A minority reports

Found four people who disliked Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. "Rubbish book" said one friend angrily. "It could have been edited down to half its size. It had absolutely no moments, nothing wonderous, nothing that lit up your imagination," said another.

Half-Blood Prince seems to be the book in which J K Rowling tied up all the threads she had unravelled in previous books. Problem is that now it's full of knots and that makes it a very bumpy ride.

Bombay sunk

Bombay just went down this past week due to torrential rains. If people get the government they deserve, do they also get the suffering they deserve? And while on the government, the CEO of the state was in a three-hour meeting with the other men who lead the city on Tuesday afternoon when the storm broke. They were talking about rains elsewhere while Bombay's people were neck-deep in water, snakes, rats, trash, crap...

Seems the chief minister braved a 45-minute journey home. Citizens spent that many hours trying to get their lives back under control but failed. People lost EVERYTHING they owned. EVERYTHING. People who had something to lose as well as those who had nothing. And then the prime minister of the country flew down, did an aerial survey and said he's convinced the government did enough. Is it because elections are four years away and no one cares?

When it rained, politicians and the police went back to wherever slime goes when it smells a storm coming. When it was time to lead, the leaders were missing. Next day the papers were full of stories of ordinary people who came out and lead the city. Because they had been left to fend for themselves. The government said it was not prepared for a tragedy of this magnitude. Someone tell the morons that's why there's a whole department called disaster management for which we pay taxes. Why would we need them to manage things when everything is under control?

But the fault was our own. Bombay drowned because we built townships on the road to success at the cost of the city. Some time over the last two decades, when the decision to develop the city's open spaces and stifle its flowing streams was taken, environmentalists raised an alarm about indiscriminate development. The then government simply dropped these environmentalists from its list of people who it needed to listen to.

Well this week, Day After Tomorrow happened to Bombay and it didn't need a tsunami to make that happen. It just rained.

In our efforts to build our dreams on the land of this city, we gagged it, abused it and raped it. And it serves us right.

Rowling loses magic touch

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The book begins not with Harry but Cornelius Fudge warning the Muggle Prime Minister of death and disturbance everywhere. As Harry enters his sixth year at Hogwarts, Voldemort’s Death Eaters are sucking life out of magical and non-magical people.

To begin with, who cares an eff about the Muggle Prime Minister? And by the way, after laying the whole imminent disaster in non-magical lands, Rowling forgets about them for the rest of the book. It's like they've done a disappearing act. If they were really so unimportant, why waste a whole chapter and that too the first, on them?

Then headmaster Albus Dumbledore takes Harry into Voldemort’s past to help him know his enemy. Love, betrayal and death run amuck in this book and clues to Voldemort’s death are sowed in its last chapters. Yes, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a must-read.

But.

The identity of the Half-Blood Prince is over-rated although his contribution to the much-hyped death isn’t. Keep a tub of ice-cream ready to help you get through it. And while on that chapter, why does Dumbledore bind Harry from using his powers right before You Know What happens? Harry could have used his magic to help the situation turn in their favour. But may be then the book would not have ended with yet more heartache for our hero. And why is Dumbledore so senti, for f's sake.

And whatever happened to Malfoy? Is no one else surprised by his transformation into a snivelling wuss? What a loss of a character.

Fans used to the beefcakes Rowling last produced (Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix) will be disappointed with the slimmer Half-Blood Prince. Although her previous books were continuations, they had ends in themselves as well. In contrast this is more Half-Book than Half-Prince. Plus, the middle half is a teen romance. Love blossoms everywhere except where it started, with Ron and Hermione. Yes, those two still do no more than blush at each other.

Rowling’s unease in writing about love is evident in her treatment of Harry’s attraction towards Ginny.The first time Harry imagines kissing Ginny, for instance, the ‘monster in his chest purred’. Another time, ‘The creature in his chest (is) roaring in triumph’. Cringe cringe. And why is Ginny's face always blazing hard? I don't get it.

Rowling writes on her site that this book is her personal favourite which makes me very frightened for the next book. Someone give her a sugar quill. Thankfully, the characters have taken off where she left which means you still give a damn.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Good news for Rowling stones. Not only is the latest book in J K Rowling's Harry Potter series expected in exactly 16 days, here's a still from the new film that will be out, I think summer of 2006 - not sure about that.

Refrigerator magnet

It happens when you come home from work. The irresistable desire to open the door of the refrigerator and shovel the first living thing (as opposed to the one that's lost its shelf life) in to your mouth. Thank god no one keeps chips in there; it never dies. But you do keep chocolate. And juices loaded with sugar. Speaking of which, I bought a carton of unsweetened orange and carrot juice. But it was sweet as sugar and I never met an orange or carrot that was that sweet, so... they're lying.

The other escape route, to avoid piling on those calories, is to have a bite before heading off for a big party. And, never, ever, go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. Your shopping cart will always have junk if you're hungry and healthier options when you are full. Try it and see. And then thank me.